In the US we don’t think of pollution as that bad specifically because we dealt with so much of it. In an unregulated country you get events like the Great Smog of 1952 in London which killed 4,000+ people and made another 100,000 sick, and then boom Clean Air Act 1956.

There are finite number of countries and they eventually focus on pollution after people build a lot of factories in the country. Even China is starting to focus on air pollution because they don’t have a choice.

Not quite the end... since a lot of shareholder value was created due to the move, others followed their lead (even without the threat of lawsuits). Now we argue about capitalism, globalization, human rights, etc. but can't seem to reconcile the fact that our world simply _cannot_ be perfect and we should focus on compromises and balances instead; this is exceptionally difficult in such a polarized environment.

It will be interesting to see where the "end" really is.